there's a universe inside your head
by Toraptor
Summary: Shiro never moves on, not truly. He lingers on glimpses frozen in time, before embracing the inevitable with open arms.


**trigger warning: depression, temporary death by suicide. **

* * *

_there's a universe inside your head_

The echo of old laughter steeps into sagging floorboards and wooden walls, tenderly cared for by worn hands and a wearier heart. Phantom footfalls, voices that are a little too sharp and clear to be in only Shiro's mind, color his seaside shack in bittersweet memories.

Space is an obsessive lover and Shiro is trapped, his mind caught in the infinite backdrop of stars. The gleaming lights are only glimpses of a flame snuffed out so many ages ago, bright spots in a vastly dark universe. He sees eyes that are blue or gray or violet in the inferno. A blade spins in the center of the chaos, the twist and turn of wild energy. Sometimes it's so close he can feel slender arms wind around his waist, hands against his back. He can press his face against a spill of inky hair, absorb soft, quiet chuckles as the storm calms.

When he snaps back to reality, his own empty hands against an aged railing are what greets him. The ocean opens wide before him, a reflection of the bluest sky, a paragon of beauty. The breeze carries the scent of salt in it and watching the seagulls circle the seafronts, he can almost feel what it's like to fly.

He's felt it before, so long ago that maybe it's another fantasy, in the cockpit of the black lion.

Lined hands, grooves dug into his skin from years and use and life, brace him against the railing. A wrap-around porch that hadn't seen serious use in decades is still tended to regardless. He scrubs it clean himself, refinishes wood. Sometimes he even remembers doing it, when his mind isn't caught in fog. When days (or weeks, or months, or was it only seconds?) slip by and he doesn't notice. He looks at the calendar and it says it's August. His phone says it's March and it's been months since he was lucid.

Matt stayed the longest, in the end. Perhaps it was because, of all of them, he understood the most. Next was Coran, with his wily laughter and curious sense of taste. Even years later, Shiro finds Altean food unpalatable and at this point in life, aged like the numerous rings on a tree trunk, he probably never will.

Their visits are the only spots of dry ground in a long, wide swamp of quick sand.

"I'm sorry," they say.

"It's alright," others say.

_I'm sorry._

His eyes are so bright even after forty years. Or maybe those are tears caught in his lashes.

_I—_

He can never finish his sentence. Shiro understands.

He smiles.

And he waits.

One final tale, one last quest.

At the end of the road all he finds are those stormy eyes.

* * *

When Shiro is twenty-five he's world-worn and tired. He's scarred and haunted, but he doesn't realize he's not truly broken until he's shattered.

The quintessense field doesn't open up again. It's over, it's done, they've won, but that's not what it feels like. Shiro never left that field of cosmic energy and shapeless space, not really. Part of him lingers still, caught, unable to move on because he is still there.

It's a quiet ceremony.

Allura wants a grand thing, a spectacle, because a Paladin of Voltron deserves such, but the rest of them know better. Eventually she does, too, and they settle for something between all of them. A gathering of close friends and that's it. They laugh, they cry, they scream and yell and for a while they're at each other's throats. When it's all over, they're settled together again, laughing and remembering.

There's food and drinks and they tell themselves this is the first step in recovering. It's not the dead who suffer, they say, it's the ones left behind. None of them quite realized the potency of these words until they've felt it themselves. Somehow, telling themselves they're healing doesn't imitate the feeling of healing. Shiro's not quite sure it's real. The floor is solid under his hands—hand—and Lance and Allura's shoulders, pressed against his own grounds him.

It happens a week later, while Shiro is trying to sleep for the first time in three days, his head pounding and body aching. He closes his eyes, falling backward into the numbing swirl of exhaustion.

He opens his eyes and Keith is there, standing at the foot of his bed.

His face is a mash of confusion, relief, and concern. His brows furrowed as they are more often than not, leaned partially forward in preparation for action. He sees Shiro and instantly relaxes, a smile lighting his face. That purple marking is still there and his hair has grown longer. It frames his face and softens him even more, as though there's an otherworldly light humming under his skin. Keith has always been beautiful.

Now, though—now, he's something else entirely. A god, perhaps.

Shiro can't move.

"Shiro," says Keith, and he sounds real. He sounds real and Shiro can't move and he's finally lost it—

"What's going on?" Keith asks, walking around the bed so he's hovering over Shiro's inert form. "We were in the quintessense field—fighting—and now I'm—is this your bedroom?"

Keith finally takes in the full sight before him, Shiro on his forearm in bead, sweat beading his forehead. A droplet rolls down his jawline and follows the corded muscles of his shoulder. Keith's eyes trail after it, two splotches of red forming on his cheeks.

It's all too much, and before the phantom disappears, before the dream ends, Shiro lashes out and grabs Keith's wrist. The armor is solid and chilled and real under his hand, his flesh and bone hand, and Shiro drops it as though it burned him.

"Shiro?" says Keith again, uncertain this time. "Are . . . you okay?"

As if no time has passed. As if the last six months were nothing. As though Shiro hasn't grieved and suffered and not really moved on.

Dismay crosses Keith's face and he reaches forward to take Shiro's hand, or maybe embrace him. Neither of them find out because the second before they can make contact, Keith's hand fluctuates into mist. He pushes his hand against—through—Shiro's hand, moves to touch his face. His hand hangs just above him and Shiro can almost feel his hair brush aside, despite the impossibility of it.

"I don't know what's going on," says Keith.

His eyes are wide and he's scared, sending another twinge of pain through the mortal wound eating Shiro's heart out.

"I don't—"

Keith's fuzzy and blurred and maybe Shiro really is hallucinating now, desperate to see Keith one more time. To say goodbye.

"I—"

"Keith, I—"

And Keith is gone.

He never got to say goodbye.

* * *

Shiro doesn't tell anyone about the incident. He doesn't know how he's supposed to, how he could explain he's seen the ghost of Keith in his room. How he loves Keith so much he can't let go. He knows what they'd say and how they'd react. He can't accept reality, or maybe it's his arm somehow. Maybe some trace Galra programming of Haggar escaped Pidge's thorough sweep.

Weeks pass. Shiro lingers on the teetering edge of hope as he waits for Keith to appear again. As if he's constantly short of a breath, standing in a sharp and bitter wind. Pausing before he opens doors, snapping his eyes awake at night in anticipation of seeing an apparition of love.

It happens again, while he's drinking tea and telling himself he's not insane.

Keith is suddenly standing opposite of him behind the coffee table and Shiro chokes on his tea. While he's coughing and beating his chest, Keith cracks a sort-of half smile. It's a little weak, but it still anchors Shiro to the world like he hasn't been since he last saw Keith.

_Please stay,_ he wants to say. _I can't deal with this, I'm not ready to say goodbye, I can't._

"I miss you," says Shiro and it's basically the same thing.

"I don't really get what's going on," says Keith, looking at his own hands as if they're foreign entities. "I'm . . ."

He lets out a frustrated sigh.

"One moment I'm just kind of . . . floating in nothingness. Then I'm here. With you. And it's . . . confusing. Like no time passes for me, but you're . . . How long has it been?"

"Almost a year," he says, and Keith draws a sharp intake of breath.

His mouth opens, then closes, then opens again. He can't seem to work out words.

"Oh," he finally says.

"I . . ." Shiro's throat is being squeezed by what feels like a boa constrictor.

Keith hesitates.

"I don't know what to think." Shiro's hand is steady, holding the cup of tea. It's porcelain, one side of it chipped. Real. It's real. "I don't know . . ."

"You think I'm not real," says Keith breathlessly. "Shiro, I'm—I'm real. I'm here, I'm stuck, I need out—"

And Shiro is on his feet, reaching for him, because he believes Keith, because Keith would never lie, phantom or not. He passes straight through air. The last he sees of Keith is his eyes, pleading, telling him over and over again:

"I'm real."

Keith is real. Keith is alive.

* * *

"It's possible," Allura says. She stands straight and there's a fire in her eyes that hasn't been in there in weeks—months. She moves with purpose that the rest of the team, that Shiro, reflects.

Until this moment, they've been wandering in a half-life, not quite able to accept and move on. They've had their ceremony, laughed and cried, remembered and spoken of fond and frustrating memories. None of it ever felt real.

This. This is real.

"There's still so much we don't know about the quintessense field," she says. Her hands are braced against the controls of their new castleship. It's not the same and never will be, but it's become home all the same.

"But how would we access the quintessense field and pull Keith out?" asks Pidge. "Last time, there was all sorts of crazy shit going down."

No one bothers to try and reprimand Pidge for her language anymore. No one dares, anyhow.

"It doesn't matter how," says Lance. "We're getting our emo boy out of there. Right, Hunk?"

Hunk nods sagely.

"No way we're leaving him there. It's been, what? A year almost? A year without a good meal. Man, I'm gonna cook a feast in celebration when we get him back."

"First we have to figure out how to access the quintessense field," says Pidge. "We have to be careful. What if we open another irreparable hole like we did fighting Lotor? I'd rather not have to blow up our castleship again. And that leads me to my next question . . ."

She hesitates, glances at Shiro.

"Why does Keith keep appearing for Shiro, but no one else?"

"I think I can explain that," says Allura. Her eyes reflect the blue of the holograms floating in the air. A universe, ever expanding, wrapped around her. "Keith and Shiro are intrinsically bonded through their connections with the black lion. Both of them formed strong relationships with the black lion and it's only natural it'll span even realities."

"Do you think . . ." Lance trails off, worrying his bottom lip. "Do you think we could use that?"

"Their connection?" says Pidge. She sounds genuinely surprised.

"It's not implausible," says Allura. Her gaze immediately goes to Shiro. "We could try and-"

"Do whatever you need," says Shiro. He moves in front of her, stares her directly the eyes, and he's both determined and begging. "Whatever it takes to save Keith."

Her expression is unreadable, before it melts into a softer smile. She understands. Of course she understands. Allura's always been the blanket that covered all of Voltron, connecting and protecting them all at once.

"Of course," she says.

* * *

They have to reconnect Shiro to the black lion. He hasn't piloted the black lion in over two years. He's never felt even the fainted stirring of consciousness from the lions and it's concerning. Before now, he never considered he'd have to rebuilt his bond with the black lion. Keith is the paladin of the black lion, Keith is the leader of Voltron now, Keith is his world.

Part of the reason he could never accept Keith was gone was because he'd never fathomed a world where Keith wasn't there.

Now, though. Now there's hope. A foothold. That's all he ever needed.

He sits in the black lion. He waits for the familiar tug of another consciousness, something bigger than him, like floating on an ocean in the eye of a hurricane.

The anticipation is back and he's leaning forward, hands clamped around the arm rests, eyes closed. He's waiting for the lion and waiting and waiting and it's never occurs to him that he might wait forever and nothing will happen.

It never crosses his mind the lion won't reconnect. That he can't bond again. That their bond was irrevocably broken when Allura transferred his spirit from the lion. It feels like it happened so long ago, but now he remembers it with sharp clarity. The emptiness, the hollow, the bittersweet reality that his time as a paladin was over.

Keith had held onto him, though, his arms wrapped around Shiro's broad shoulders and holding him up. The emptiness was buried under Keith's musky scent and warm smile.

Seconds turn into minutes, wears into an hour. The hour stretches and a seed of despair that he desperately tries to stamp out and kill, ignore with all his might, grows into gaping hopelessness. Shiro's eyes squeeze close, he begs, he cries, and yells at the lion. He calms, his breath shuddering in his chest, tries to clear his mind.

_Absolutely nothing_.

Five hours later, Allura drags him bodily from the black lion. He's fighting and yelling, but she's Altean and stronger. There are shadows under her eyes and she's good at hiding what she feels, but not good enough. Heartbreak echoes in the rest of the crew, in their hunched forms that suddenly seem so small. They're so young and hopeful and they've never truly felt grief before now.

"I need more time—"

"Shiro."

"I can—I can still—"

"Shiro."

"It's not over!"

"It's alright," says Allura, her voice cracking through her watery smile, strong for them.

Shiro doesn't look at the other paladins, can't look at them. He can't bring himself to face their disappointment. The worst part is he knows they don't blame him, won't blame him, and he wishes they would. He wishes they would feel the same kind of disappointment in him that he feels in himself. He wants to throw himself back at the black lion and stay in there for hours and hours, for the rest of his life, until he molds with the lion again.

They sit together in the gathering room for one long, silent hour. None of them can bring themselves to interrupt the mourning quiet, not even Lance, who glances between all of them with eyes paled from grief. They're all suffering. Shiro knows this. Even so, the void in his chest feels like it threatens to swallow up the entire room, the ship, the universe, into nothingness.

Eventually, it's Pidge, not Lance, who breaks the silence. Her voice is low and soft, but ruptures the air regardless.

"Could we . . ." she falters. "Could we still try to use the black lion? Maybe Keith's connection is strong enough . . . Allura, could you . . .?"

Allura is shaking her head before Pidge is even done speaking, her eyebrows furrowed. Coran sits next to her, an arm around her shoulders, his face remarkably still and calm. They're all like children to him, their children, and Keith is one of them.

"I can't," she says, as though she's speaking through fractured glass. "I can't. I'm not—I'm not the alchemist my father was. I can't."

Allura finally breaks.

She doesn't cover her face, doesn't curl up, doesn't hide her grief. She hugs herself and cries and cries. Shiro feels like he should be crying with her, with them, but it's as though all his tears have dried up. The grief is there, a heavy weight in his chest, but there's a plug bottling it all up inside him. He feels like he'll explode any moment, but the moments come and go and he doesn't.

* * *

It isn't for another three months that Keith appears again, in a seaside abode with a perfect view of the ocean.

They all chipped in to build it. Lance took care of the porch, lovingly making sure it's large enough to fit every guest they'll ever invite. Allura agonized over the colors. Pidge made the blueprints, Hunk did the electric and plumbing. It draws them closer than they've been in over a year. For a few heartbeats, Shiro almost thinks he can live like this.

Like all things, it can't last forever.

They trickle out, one by one. Lance goes home. Pidge returns to her family. Allura and Coran are at home in space, not by the ocean. Hunk misses his own family. Slowly, gradually, they leave. Until Shiro is left with himself and only himself, the howling ocean fronts and crying seagulls.

And Keith.

"We—we can't . . ."

Shiro chokes on the lump in his throat.

Keith understands. Of course he understands. He always said he has a hard time getting social clues and connecting with people, but Keith understood in a way no one else does.

"It's alright," he says. He smiles and it's bittersweet, reaching to rest a hand—a blessedly solid, warm hand—on Shiro's shoulder. "I fought so you all could be happy. You've still got a long life ahead of you. Live it!"

He absorbs Keith's words, his smile, the vastness of his eyes that reflect the universe he really does love so much. It's Keith and always has been. ("I'll never give up on you.") Living without him—moving on—has never seemed so impossible. But Keith is asking him, wants him to move on and have a life. He wants Shiro to live and love again.

"Live for the both of us," says Keith.

"I'll try," says Shiro.

Never has a promise been so easily broken.

* * *

Soon, five years have passed and Shiro is thirty-one. The other paladins are moving on, slowly, painfully. Lance and Allura separate on good terms and no one is really surprised. She's always been in space, traveled space, surrounded by the endless stars. Lance loves his home, he loves Earth, and he loves his family. He also loves Allura, in his own way, but when they part ways there's a lightness in his step no one has seen since before they dated.

Pidge and Hunk have revolutionized technology, going to lengths that haven't been seen since the height of Altean history. The universe is stabilized, or as stable as it can be, since there will always be some kind of conflict that needs resolution. Voltron is there for that, always.

At the end of the day, Shiro returns to the seaside shack and waits. He waits and waits, sometimes months, sometimes years, for the fifteen seconds he'll get lost in those violet (or maybe blue or gray) eyes again. Keith is so patient, so understanding, always smiling no matter how clearly Shiro's life has fallen apart.

"Live," Keith says.

"I will," Shiro replies.

He almost finds love in someone, a man that's a few years younger than him with blond hair and the widest blue eyes. It's as though he sees everything and he's wonderful. And Shiro—Shiro can't.

He can't.

"It didn't work out?" says Keith when he appears again, ten years later to an empty shack.

Shiro gives a plaintive half-smile.

"We didn't click," he says.

There's sadness in Keith's smile again, maybe a little disappointment, but he accepts it nonetheless.

"There's still time. You're still young," he says. "You can still find someone."

Shiro doesn't even bother agreeing this time, because he can't. He's had enough lying to Keith's face, he's had enough pretending he can ever move on. In his own way, he has moved on. He's accepted that he'll never let go of Keith. Keith will always be there, snatches in his life, seconds ticking away. Months wasted waiting for one breath of fresh air.

Maybe Keith has already realized this, his eyes bright with something like tears.

Eventually, Shiro is old. He's old and tired, more tired than he's ever been, aches in his bones. Every scar and beating he ever received from his long line of service to the universe sings within his body, a twisted remix of his life playing on repeat.

Some days are better than others. Some days, he steps outside and remembers it, feet against the porch that hasn't seen visitors in years. He turns his face into the sea breeze and smiles up at the sky. Other days he finds himself circling the porch, the stars hanging above him, and wonders how long he's been there. Time doesn't add up, the date on his clock and the date in his head misaligned, and he can't remember where it all went.

His tea this morning is minty with an undertone of bitterness. It sits on his tongue like a long-lasting memory, like all his memories, and he's thankful for the moment of clarity. He settles back in a chair, slow and mindful of his old bones and papery skin. His one flesh and bone hand taps against the side of the chair, his other a stump. He gave up the prosthetic an age ago, but sometimes he still feels it there. The cold chill where the metal meets his flesh, the sharp twinges of pain where there shouldn't be any.

Another sip of tea, the aftertaste rooting him to reality.

He can hear Pidge's feet stomping around against the wood, Lance's unrestrained laughter on the wind, Allura was there with them, always, guiding them to the future. He looks at his own weathered hands, more lines than he has stories to tell, and thinks she tried her best. She did well.

He gulps the rest up, setting the cup down. It's handmade by Pidge, painted by Hunk. Lance added a flare to it in the shape of what was probably a fingergun, but looked like a wobbly triangle.

Decades gave him ample time to understand the meaning of Keith's appearances. Why and how and when and where. He'll come again, soon.

Shiro's been waiting twenty years. He can wait a few more minutes.

His breath is labored with age and the tea is warm in his stomach. It keeps him awake.

He hears steps that aren't in his head, that aren't memories woven in the wind. A voice that doesn't fade out in the end, lost in his mind.

"Shiro?" says Keith.

He's quiet, almost timid, and Shiro understands why.

Keith walks around Shiro's chair, a shaking hand reaching for his own. His eyes are wide and brimming with tears.

"Shiro," he says again.

Shiro and Keith. Keith and Shiro. That's all they've ever been and all they ever will be.

"It's been a long time," says Shiro, smiling. The crows feet around his eyes deepen. He reaches out with his other hand and Keith doesn't hesitate to take it.

"You're—is there no one else here?" says Keith, looking up briefly. Taking in the shack, the forests, the wide ocean view. It's beautiful and lonely. "You're alone?"

"It's been a long life," says Shiro.

"You—you still have time," says Keith. His voice breaks and his breath hitches, a kind of desperate hopelessness shown in the hunch of his shoulders. "You could still live decades, Shiro, you can still reconnect with everyone—"

Shiro drops Keith's hands and cradles his face instead.

"Not this time," he says, taking in every detail. The little flecks of blue and gray in Keith's stormy eyes. The faintest pattering of freckles that aren't quite visible from afar, the accents of pale violet in his hair that betrays his Galra heritage. The slender marking across his cheek, his soft skin and sharp jawline. Everything that was Keith and more.

He wants Keith to be the last thing he ever sees.

"Not this time," he says again.

The cough punches up through his throat like a fist, nearly doubling him over. He drops Keith's face and covers his mouth instead.

Keith frantically grips his shoulders, calling out for him. He sounds like he's yelling from above the ocean surface and Shiro is sinking. He's sinking down, down, farther into the depths. Keith is a gleaming spot of light above him. The hopes and dreams of a better life.

"Shiro!"

Keith is yelling now. Something wet drops on his hands and he knows Keith's crying, because this is it—this is the end, and this isn't what he wanted. Keith fought and sacrificed everything for their happiness, and Shiro understands. He really does, but in the end he's only human—selfishly, impossibly human.

"You can still live!" Keith cries, shaking him. "You still have time, you can meet people, you could be happy, why would you—why would you do this?! SHIRO!"

Shiro takes a few last breaths, swimming furiously for that surface one more time, because he owes Keith an explanation if nothing else. Keith hasn't had decades to figure it out. He's been stuck in a void for years, unable to live his own life, selflessly wishing for Shiro to move on and find love and happiness.

"We're connected," he says, relieved when Keith takes his trembling hand, struggling to Keith's face, and holds it there for him. "We're connected. When you—when you—"

Speaking is hard. He mixed the poisons well. He's slipping away so neatly and sweetly it feels like he's falling asleep.

"You disappeared in the field," he says, "in the—the quintessense. We're connected. By the black lion. You're always coming back to me. Over and . . . over. When I—go, the bond will break. You'll go back."

"Who cares about me?" Keith's voice rips from his chest, tears streak down his face. "You could have lived on without me!"

"Why do that," says Shiro, smiling despite the darkness edging his vision, because in the end he'll have the last laugh, "when we can do it over together?"

Keith is a storm, an ocean hurricane, swirling round and round. He leaves disaster in his wake, sweeps up everything in his circle, all save the center of it all—the blissful center. Shiro lets himself be swept up, lets himself fall into it.

Keith holds onto him, keeps talking.

Those eyes, blue or gray or violet, are the last thing he'll see. He could spend a whole lifetime deciding the color of Keith's eyes and he's—

He's happy.

_I—_

Neither of them could ever finish those words.

.

.

.

Voltron flies from the quintessense field like a pellet flung from a sling shot, tumbling into open space, breaking apart instantly as their energy depletes. A starry backdrop of blue and red and violet surrounds them, envelops them. For a moment, they say nothing, gasping for breath and reveling in the fact they're all alive. They're alive and unharmed and relatively well. Bumped up and bruised, shaken and still a little terrified, high on adrenaline.

They're alive.

Shiro blinks his eyes awake and Keith is there.

He's crying.

"Keith?" he says, oblivious. The last thing he remembered—the last thing—all he gets is snatches of something minty and sweet. After the battle they just survived, it feels odd to ask, but he says anyway, "What's wrong?"

Keith's breath comes in shuddering sobs, wiping tears from his eyes. Instead of answering, he flings himself at Shiro, wraps him up with his arms and legs. Shiro returns his hug despite his bewilderment, rubbing his hand up and down his back. Keith is warm and blessedly alive in his arms.

"It's all right," says Keith shakily. He clutches to Shiro as though he's afraid Shiro will turn to mist and disappear. "It'll be all right. It's all right. It's all right."

He repeats it like a mantra. It's not frantic, but assured.

Clinging to each other in the middle of the endless void of space, Shiro believes him.

A thousand lives, a thousand deaths, and it'll always be the two of them. Together, unending.

Shiro can't imagine it any other way.

_"I love you."_

* * *

**notes: cross-posted from AO3, title taken from Lauren Aquilina's Talk To Me. **


End file.
